Over Coffee® is on holiday hiatus. Please enjoy this reposting of one of our top episodes of 2023!

The countdown is on!

On New Year’s Day, Pasadena’s 135th Rose Parade®is happening.

Creating a parade float that works, technically, and is knock-everyone’s-eyes-out spectacular, is the ultimate S.T.E.A.M. endeavor.

Science, technology, engineering, art and math all play a part in the “wow factor” you’ll see on New Year’s Day.

Pam Wiedenbeck is Vice President of Float Development for nonprofit La Canada Flintridge Tournament of Roses: one of six community organizations, known as “self-builts”, that fund and create their own noncommercial floats, every year, and enter them in the Rose Parade®. LCFRA has been entering floats in the Rose Parade since 1978.

For 2024, their creation is a float entitled “Flower Power”. This is a 1960s band bus, on which a band, composed of flowers, plays a series of 1960s songs. With the construction and painting finished, the decorating with flowers begins, right after Christmas!

Currently, LCFTRA’s website says all decorator shifts are filled. However, if you’d like to help, theremay be walk-up shift availability Here’s the link to find out more!

AND–do you have a great idea for a float for the 2025 Rose Parade®? LCFTRA’s “Float Design Competition” is on, right now!

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• How Pam’s background first got her “hooked” on float building;

• The different S.T.E.A.M. aspects of creating a Rose Parade® float;

• The science of welding;

• What “cold welds” are (you don’t want these!);

• Technology, as it relates to float animation;

• How LCFTRA chooses their music for the floats;

• What a float can weigh!;

• Art considerations;

• Logistics of the decorating process;

• Where math is involved, in float building;

• The troubleshooting involved when “life happens”;

• Considerations involved in project management for Rose Parade® floats;

• A funny coincidence (or not!) between weather and parade Grand Marshal choices!

Like to know more about nonprofit La Canada Flintridge Tournament of Roses and their year-round activity creating their spectacular and entertaining Rose Parade® floats? Pam has been kind enough to give us update interviews as their 2024 float, “Flower Power” takes shape! Here are the second and third interviews in our series, as the LCFTRA team reached major milestones!